In Chesterfield Public Schools:  African American students are 27% of the student enrollment but only 10% of students receiving gifted education services.  Caucasian students are 61% of the student enrollment, yet 82% of students receiving gifted education services.

-Of the 57 Chesterfield County students selected for admission to Maggie Walker Governor’s School for the 2009-10 school year, 1 student was African American and 1 student was Hispanic; and

-Students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch are 25% of the school district enrollment but less than 3% of students placed in the center-based gifted education program.

-Recommend rejecting 8 VAC 20-40-40 subparagraph D3, Screening, referral, identification, and service.  Subparagraph D.3 provides that the identification process used by each school division must ensure that no single criterion is used to determine a student’s eligibility [for gifted services]. 

-Chesterfield County Public Schools uses a single criterion – 97^th percentile or higher on the CoGAT – for a student to be considered for center-based gifted education programs.  Students scoring in the 96^th  percentile or below are considered for home school gifted services which consists of differentiated instruction in the classroom (at best). 

-Recommend subparagraph D3 be rejected and replaced with specific language that establishes how to weight the criteria relied upon for gifted identification.  The weight given any criteria should be research-based and validated.

-Recommend subparagraph D3 be rejected and replaced with specific language requiring school divisions which rely upon a cut off score, in this case 97^th percentile, and used to determine the level of gifted services, to establish the validity of using that criteria as a determinant in providing the level of gifted services.